BitPay Confirms Bitcoin Cash Retail Payments as Prices Jump

Cryptocurrency payment service provider BitPay has announced that it will allow brick-and-mortar businesses to use Bitcoin Cash for payments. Already available for Bitcoin, the new service will give customers the option to choose between paying in BTC or BCH.

BitPay Checkout, used by restaurants and other retail businesses, is currently being used in Atlanta, Toronto, St. Petersburg, Madeira Beach and Paris. BitPay has been serving these entities since Nov. 2014, which is why the company has decided to include more options for crypto payments. With 1% processing fee and integration with companies such as Shopify, 3DCart and Bitmonet, BCH users will find the new update favorable.

“When customers go to pay, they can select their currency of choice, select the option to give a tip, then scan a BitPay Checkout QR code with their mobile wallets,” BitPay wrote. “Payments take just a swipe or a tap, and the receiving merchant gets a local currency bank settlement within one business day. Merchants get every dollar or euro they charge, minus BitPay’s 1% processing fee.”

Last month, BitPay upgraded their system so that buyers using the platform could accept online payments in Bitcoin Cash as well as Bitcoin. After joining the crypto community in 2011, this was the first time an altcoin was included by the company. The press release stated that merchants integrating BitPay for small-scale transactions including video games and app downloads would find it easier “since Bitcoin Cash costs only pennies (or less) for customers to send”.

Last year, BitPay co-founder, Stephen Pair, said that after careful observation, they found out that no bitcoin alternative was innovative or “compelling”. Despite scaling issues, Pair concluded that Bitcoin was the best cryptocurrency till date. However, following Bitcoin Cash’s launch in August, BitPay allowed users to store and spend BCH in its open source wallet, Copay. This announcement was considered as one of the reasons behind the increase in BCH’s price from $313 to $431 within 24 hours in Sep. 2017. The next month, BitPay confirmed that it would begin accepting “additional blockchain payment methods” starting with BCH. Once again, the news caused BCH to break records by crossing the $2,000 mark.

Bitcoin Cash, currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, has once again increased by almost 19% after BitPay’s announcement today. However, the price was already rising upwards – it is now up 100% in one week. The market cap has also doubled within these seven days, climbing from $12 billion to $24 billion.